Five Indian-Americans in Forbes list of US' richest

September 20, 2012

New York, September 20: Five Indian-Americans, including Silicon Valley venture capitalist Vinod Khosla and founder of IT major Syntel, Bharat Desai, have been named among the richest people in the US by Forbes, a list of 400 billionaires topped by Microsoft founder Bill Gates. See images


Gates, 56, whose net worth grew $7 billion from a year earlier to $66 billion in 2012, topped the list for the 19th year in a row.

He is followed by Berkshire Hathaway Inc.'s Buffett (No. 2) with $46 billion, also up $7 billion from last year, and Oracle Corp's Larry Ellison (No. 3) with $41 billion, up $8 billion—and the biggest dollar gainer this year.

Desai with a net worth of $2 billion as of September 2012 has been ranked 239 in Forbes' annual list released yesterday.

Desai, 59, started Syntel in 1980 with his wife while earning his MBA from the University of Michigan. An IIT Mumbai alumnus, Desai stepped down as chief executive of the firm in 2009 but remains chairman.

Founder and chairman of the Symphony Technology Group, Romesh Wadhwani is ranked 250 with a net worth $1.9 billion.

Google board member and shareholder Kavitark Ram Shriram occupies the 298th rank with a net worth of $1.6 billion. Manoj Bhargava, founder and CEO of the popular energy drink '5-hour energy' is ranked 311 and has a $1.5 billion net worth.

He is followed by Khosla on the 328th rank and a $1.4 billion net worth.

The net worth of the richest Americans grew by 13 per cent in the past year to $1.7 trillion, Forbes magazine said in a statement.

A graduate of Carnegie Mellon University and IIT Mumbai, Wadhwani, 65, developed business software firm Aspect Development which he sold in 2000 during the height of the tech bubble for $9.3 billion.

A "notable" newcomer on the list, Bhargava, 59, is a Princeton University drop out who "chose one of the roads less traveled to the American Dream".

Described as a math whiz, Bhargava lived as a monk in the mountains of India for 12 years before returning to the US to forge a successful career in plastics.

Forbes said Stanford and IIT alumnus Khosla, 57, "isn't afraid to fail”. His firm also had a stake in social enterprise software company Yammer, which was purchased by Microsoft in July for $1.2 billion.

A Google board member and large shareholder, Shriram, 55, has stakes in online outsourcer 24/7 Customer and serendipitous website picker StumbleUpon.

He also invested in Inkling, which makes interactive textbooks for the iPad.

He serves as a trustee at Stanford University, where he and his wife endowed the Shriram Family Professorship in Science Education.


Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has been pushed down in the rankings to the No. 36 spot with his estimated net worth falling by about $8 billion to $9.4 billion since Facebook went public in May.

bharat_desai

Bharat Desai | Rank: 239 | Net worth: $2 billion

Desai, 59, is the chairman and co-founder of Syntel, which he started in 1980 with his wife while earning his MBA from the University of Michigan. An IIT Mumbai alumnus, Desai stepped down as chief executive of the firm in 2009.

romesh-wadhwani

Romesh Wadhwani | Rank: 250 | Net worth: $1.9 billion

Wadhwani, 65, is the founder and chairman of Symphony Technology Group, a private equity firm that invests in software and software services companies.

kavitark-ram-shriram

Kavitark Ram Shriram | Rank: 298 | Net worth: $1.6 billion

Shriram, 55, is a Google board member and shareholder. He also has stakes in online outsourcer 24/7 Customer and website picker StumbleUpon. He was one of the first people to write a check to Google co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page in 1998.

manoj-bhargava

Manoj Bhargava | Rank: 311 | Net worth: $1.5 billion

Bhargava, 59, is the founder and CEO of the popular energy drink brand '5-hour energy'. He is a Princeton University drop out who "chose one of the roads less travelled to the American Dream".

vinod-khosla

Vinod Khosla | Rank: 328 | Net Worth: $1.4 billion

Khosla, 57, is a partner at Khosla Ventures. The Stanford and IIT alumnus "isn't afraid to fail, and has staked a big claim in clean tech—including on some companies he refers to as science experiments".


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Agencies
January 6,2020

The Cambridge Analytica scandal is far from over. New explosive details leaked by a whistleblower shows that the extent of the rot is far deeper than previously thought.

An anonymous Twitter account, @HindsightFiles, has started releasing the documents, apparently on behalf of Brittany Kaiser, a former employee of the now defunct British data analytics and consulting company Cambridge Analytica.

"Democracies around the world are being auctioned to the highest bidder. We release the documents that explain how," reads the biography of the @HindsightFiles.

The document will reveal previously unreleased emails, project plans, case studies, negotiations and more spanning over 60 countries.

"Over the past two years I have given evidence to investigators, journalists and academics to analyse what happened at Cambridge Analytica, and how our data was used to influence democracies around the world. In the name of shedding light on these dark practices, I am releasing documents and emails in full for the public good," Kaiser, who worked with Cambridge Analytica from 2014 to 208, was quoted as saying.

"I do this to strengthen the case for data rights and enforcement of our electoral laws online globally. We should all be seeking more ethical digital future for ourselves and our children," added Kaiser who starred in the Oscar-shortlisted Netflix documentary "The Great Hack".

The details released so far includes links to material on the firm's activities in Malaysia, Kenya, Brazil and Iran, an addition to the John Bolton archive.

Over the next months, more than 100,000 documents relating to work in 68 countries are set to be released, according to a report in The Guardian.

More than one and a half year after the Cambridge Analytica scandal first became public, US regulators last month said that the now-defunct British data analytics and consulting company engaged in deceptive practices to harvest personal information from tens of millions of Facebook users for voter profiling and targeting.

According to Kaiser, the Facebook data scandal was part of a much bigger global operation designed to manipulate people in collaboration with governments, intelligence agencies, commercial companies and political campaigns.

The unpublished documents contain material that suggests the firm collaborated with a political party in Ukraine in 2017 even while under investigation as part of Robert Mueller's investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential election, said The Guardian report.

"There are emails between these major Trump donors discussing ways of obscuring the source of their donations through a series of different financial vehicles. These documents expose the entire dark money machinery behind US politics," Kaiser was quoted as saying.

Similar tactics were deployed in other countries that Cambridge Analytica operated in, including Britain, she claimed.

The files released by Kaiser suggest that Cambridge Analytica offered to help United Malays National Organisation (Umno), the party of Malaysia's Former Prime Minister Najib Razak, to influence the voting of 40 parliamentary constituencies in the 14th General Election (GE14) in 2013.

Umno, according to the leaks, requested the company to prepare a proposal to regain 13 seats, The South China Morning Post reported on Saturday.

In 2018, Razak claimed that he had never engaged Cambridge Analytica in any way.

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News Network
April 25,2020

Bueno Aires, Apr 25: Dozens of prisoners at a jail in Argentina's capital Buenos Aires rioted on Friday demanding urgent health measures after confirmation of a coronavirus case inside the facility.

Police surrounded the prison, which holds around 2,200 inmates, as explosions were heard, news agency reporters at the scene said.

A group of prisoners managed to climb onto a roof, burn mattresses and throw objects at security guards trying to quell the uprising.

Authorities have yet to comment on the riot or whether there are any injuries.

Inmates could be heard shouting demands for a judge to hear their case and for better protection against the pandemic, just a few days after a warden at the Villa Devoto prison was confirmed to have contracted the novel coronavirus.

"COVID-19 in Devoto, genocidal judges," read a banner hung from the prison roof. "We refuse to die in prison," read another.

The inmates are demanding, among other things, that releases that were pending before the pandemic be processed.

Several other riots broke out in prisons last week, including in Florencio Varela in Buenos Aires province where one inmate died and 20 were injured.

Argentina has been in lockdown since March 20 and has recorded more than 3,400 coronavirus cases and 167 deaths.

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News Network
June 1,2020

Jun 1: The new coronavirus is losing its potency and has become much less lethal, a senior Italian doctor said on Sunday.

"In reality, the virus clinically no longer exists in Italy," said Alberto Zangrillo, the head of the San Raffaele Hospital in Milan in the northern region of Lombardy, which has borne the brunt of Italy's coronavirus contagion.

"The swabs that were performed over the last 10 days showed a viral load in quantitative terms that was absolutely infinitesimal compared to the ones carried out a month or two months ago," he told RAI television.

Italy has the third-highest death toll in the world from COVID-19, with 33,415 people dying since the outbreak came to light on Feb. 21. It has the sixth-highest global tally of cases at 233,019.

However new infections and fatalities have fallen steadily in May and the country is unwinding some of the most rigid lockdown restrictions introduced anywhere on the continent.

Zangrillo said some experts were too alarmist about the prospect of a second wave of infections and politicians needed to take into account the new reality.

"We've got to get back to being a normal country," he said. "Someone has to take responsibility for terrorizing the country."

The government urged caution, saying it was far too soon to claim victory.

"Pending scientific evidence to support the thesis that the virus has disappeared ... I would invite those who say they are sure of it not to confuse Italians," Sandra Zampa, an undersecretary at the health ministry, said in a statement.

"We should instead invite Italians to maintain the maximum caution, maintain physical distancing, avoid large groups, to frequently wash their hands and to wear masks."

A second doctor from northern Italy told the national ANSA news agency that he was also seeing the coronavirus weaken. "The strength the virus had two months ago is not the same strength it has today," said Matteo Bassetti, head of the infectious diseases clinic at the San Martino hospital in the city of Genoa.

"It is clear that today the COVID-19 disease is different."

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